Current Situation One of my self built boxes is my (currently) Ubuntu Linux based archive server. It’s used essentially as a NAS (though it does do some other things) using an old CPU and motherboard, 6 HDDs and an SSD for OS. The non-drive components are getting old, so I have a plan to swap them out in 2024 and I’m being extra vigilent around them of late. ...
A new PC build? It’s been a long, long time since I did a from-scratch PC build, but for this Xmas I’ll be doing two for the family. Yes, it has come to this time. These are for people used to a Switch/PS4 console gaming environment, and have only really used Raspberry Pis and general laptops for computing or PC styl;e gaming. Expected usage will be: 1080p gaming (Minecraft, Apex Legends/Fortnite etc.), some desktop homework, browsing, programming with Scratch, some image editing and for one, some introductory 3D modelling and rendering with Blender. ...
(Late Summer 2019) I wrote previously about my successful animatronic eyes build using some ping pong balls as ’eyes’, which moved around on a rig, each powered by 2 servos, for 2 axes of movement and controlled by an Adafruit Crickit and the Circuit Playground Express [CPE]. It worked well enough and the effect was quite interesting, but for what I wanted - eyes moving in a hood as party of a creepy monster animatronic for Hallowe’en - there were a few drawbacks. I could put the Cricket/CPE behind the eyes and use the onboard LEDs to shine a creepy red light behind them which looked good, but it was difficult to see them under most hood ideas. Also, I could program the ’eyes’ to move in a nice creepy way, but the servo noise was a bit distracting. ...
January 2013. That seems like quite a long time ago. In fact, that was pretty much 7 years ago. Certainly life was very different back then. That was the time I’d just built a new PC based around an Intel i5 3470 CPU and an AMD 5750 graphics card. Heady times for sure. Here I am, seven years later looking to do another build, so yes, I feel like I got my moneys worth out of those parts, and as you read this, they are on an auction site, looking for a low end buyer. I did upgrade some parts in the mean time - I added a USB Asus U7 sound card in 2014 to address some bad audio interference I was hearing from the motherboard audio chipset, a new nVidia 1060 6GB graphics card in late 2016, and a new Samsung SSD in 2018. So what we’re really talking about is a new CPU, mobo, memory and boot drive; and a new monitor; and a new cooling fan. ...
After a few years on the rather excellent Grav system, I’ve moved brightblack into the Jekyll static site generator. Why so? I like Grav, I really do, but I didn’t use or need most of the functionality, as this site is very simple in layout, it’s just me doing it. As an example, eventually I was putting things together in local text editors - which is more my workflow for most things - and pasting into the Grav editor. That’s not making the most of Grav, and points to a potentially faster method for me. ...
I seem to be running out of Raspberry Pis compared to the number of small projects I’m using them in. As it is, my Pi3 is torn between Kodi/LibreELEC and some animatronic duty and the Pi2 is being used in my wi-fi car which is currently a live project. That’s why at some point I need to buy a Pi4! I also wanted to bring back my Pi-Hole, which used to be on the Pi2. What to do? Well what I’ve done is re-install Raspberry Pi OS Lite and then Pi-Hole on my ancient Pi 1B, and so far it seems to be working fine, no heating or load issues as far as I can tell, so it feels good to get some more functionality out of that. ...
(Summer 2019) For a while I’ve wanted to do a simple animatronic for Halloween. Each year we do a simple setup outside our house for the neighbourhood kids, and each year we try to add to it, usually with some better items we pick up over the year, but I wanted to start adding some home made items, in that spirit of home-made Halloween fare. A couple of years ago I did a head prop I made from a 100yen polystyrene wig stand, first as a ‘grey’ alien head, then I got some latex and a craft knife and made something a little more gory. I quite enjoyed making it and looking at the response it got from both kids and adults, they seemed to be intrigued too. ...
Off the bat, I’m not a ‘maker’ but I have an interest in that area, and have for a long time had some Raspberry Pis, an Arduino Uno board and some other random things about the place for various small home projects and general tinkering. Here then, I’m going back in time a few years to the Summer of 2016, and the Raspberry Pi wifi robot car I built. It’s not that complicated, and largely was done by following a project guide, and getting components from Adafruit.com. I had a Raspberry Pi 2 kicking around and was looking for something to do with it, and something which my kids could do some thinking around and tinkering with, without it being a simple remote control item. ...